


I'm just doing my job

by rarmaster



Series: She's Someone I'll Never Be [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, ok Repliqua is obviously the most important one here but all the others still have, something of a shining role even within these thousand words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 08:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8137081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: Even with a partner to help him, things don't exactly turn out better for Xaldin. It's not like it was her fault, though. She was just doing her job.(Set in the version of KH2 where Repliqua stays with the Organization, instead of deserting them.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Repliqua staying with the Org wasn't even on the table for the AU until yesterday when I was replaying KH2 and I was like "hey ok imagine this but also with Repliqua here"
> 
> I understand that none of the canon for Repliqua between this point and [her introduction back at the start of Days](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8135785) has been even a little bit established but just. bear with me. I'll be jumping around for the entirety of my career writing this AU because there's just too much to explore and why limit myself to writing chronologically

“Your orders were to help Xaldin, in whatever he needed,” Saix said firmly, stepping again to block her path. Quaxa thought about turning around and walking away, but no, Saix did _technically_ rank above her. Even if Xemnas was lenient…

“They were to help him as far as collecting hearts went, not in picking a fight with Sora,” Quaxa countered, fixing Saix with an icy stare that easily matched the one he always regarded her with. It helped that she was, somehow, a few inches taller than him. (Some of that was her shoes, she thought, but she knew her shoes were not all of it.)

“Did you stop to think Xaldin might still be here if you had helped him?” Saix said, smoothly.

“And what if Sora had been too much for the both of us?”

She knew it wasn’t true—knew that the magic burning in her veins could easily wipe Sora out of existence if she let it. Saix knew this, too. And so did Xemnas, she was sure, but thankfully she had not received orders to take Sora down herself. Yet.

But maybe Xemnas feared for her. Or maybe Xemnas knew she did not _want_ to fight Sora. And so, rather than risk losing a Keyblade wielder who trusted him, Xemnas came up with other ways to dispose of Sora.

Saix sneered at her.

“You’re lucky Xemnas likes you so much,” he said, not for the first time. “But you must know your ‘friendship’ with him isn’t _real_.”

Quaxa swallowed. “Maybe that will change, once I finish Kingdom Hearts,” she said, with all the conviction she had in her.

Saix shook his head and walked away. He was chuckling to himself, but it was empty.

(Sometimes, Quaxa wondered if he knew something she did not.)

 

 

 

Of course, there _were_ things in Beast’s Castle that she had not helped Xaldin with, things outside of helping him fight Sora.

Her job, for over a year now, had always just been to collect hearts. Collect hearts, nothing more. As such, she couldn’t fathom _why_ she’d been sent with Xaldin in the first place. To defeat the powerful Heartless once he’d created it, she’d been told, but…

It didn’t sit right with her.

She’d always known where Heartless came from, what they were in reality.

But taking down creatures that had once been human was something completely different than actually putting forth the effort to _turn_ someone into a Heartless. The Beast may have been, well, a beast, and no longer human, but that really made no difference. He was still a person.

“It’s the Nobody we really need,” Xaldin had told her, when she’d asked if all this was really necessary just for another heart to feed to Kingdom Hearts. “After all, we are quite short staffed, as of late.”

“But if the point of Kingdom Hearts is just to _return_ your- our hearts to us—” She forgot, nearly for a moment, that it was a secret she was a Replica. “Then why would we want another Nobody in our number?”

“By that logic, what does it matter?” Xaldin said. “If he’s only going to be a Nobody for a couple of months, then really, what harm is done?”

Quaxa kept quiet from there, because she knew he could not be swayed. And, he had a point, but this still didn’t seem right. Why? She couldn’t say, other than…

It wasn’t something Aqua would do.

She was not Aqua, of course. She was just a weird echo of her built from data and machinery, despite what the other woman’s memories sitting in her head liked to tell her sometimes. But even as an echo, it was hard to do things the real Aqua would disapprove of.

“Come,” Xaldin said, moving forward. “We’ll have to get started, if we want this to work out.”

 

 

 

Stealing a rose was one thing, but kidnapping was another entirely. So Quaxa had split from Xaldin, leaving him to his own devices. He could take care of himself, and if he couldn’t, well, that wasn’t her problem.

It was in splitting from Xaldin that she first, _really_ , met Sora.

He and his friends ran into her in the main hall, as they were moving through to head after Xaldin. They all stopped at the sight of her—or rather, at the sight of the black cloak she wore. She still had her hood up, so there was no way Sora could recognize her (though she doubted he would, for any reason).

“Oh come on, _another_ one?” Sora groaned, dropping into his fighting stance, Keyblade coming to him readily. His friends flanked him, though the Beast looked ready to lunge past them all and out the door.

Before she could think to answer, and before Sora or his friends could demand any more of her, the Heartless appeared. Quaxa knew they were drawn here by the heart of not just one but _two_ Keyblade wielders within the same vicinity.

Sora scowled at the sight of them.

“Aww, man, we’ll never catch Xaldin like this!”

Quaxa stepped forward, between Sora and the Heartless.

“Get going,” she told him. This was Xaldin’s problem, not hers. “I’ll deal with the Heartless.”

“I’m sure your buddy’s gonna be real mad when he finds out you aren’t helping him,” Sora taunted.

“I’m just doing my job,” Quaxa countered.

“What? Fighting Heartless? That doesn’t make any—”

The Beast roared then, apparently having decided this wasn’t worth _his_ time. He took off, and Sora hastily turned to watch him go, forgetting about Quaxa.

“Hey, Beast, wait!” Sora called. He and his friends quickly ran to follow the Beast.

Quaxa let out a sigh of relief and summoned her Keyblade. Sliding from form to form, Keyblade spinning, magic bursting from underneath her skin, she made quick, _quick_ work of the Heartless.

 

 

 

After the mission, and after Xaldin’s demise, they were called to gather in the Round Room. There were only five of them left. Quaxa had not been around for long when they’d had all thirteen—or, fifteen, really, once you counted… No, wait, it would only have been fourteen. There was only herself to add to the number, no one else, even though the number fifteen stuck firmly in her head.

Either way, the most Quaxa had gotten used to was ten, no, nine. (There she was, doing it again.) She’d been quite used to there being nine of them, and now they were only five. From her chair next to Xigbar, she could easily see the empty seats that Demyx and Xaldin had left, constantly in her line of sight unless she purposefully looked away. (Axel’s and Roxas’s empty seats she could see, too, with only a slight turn of her head—She had to look past Axel’s every time she wanted to look to Luxord, and that brought a pit to her gut, but no. No. Axel had made his choice.)

She’d been allowed to sit in these meetings ever since they’d lost a third of their number in Castle Oblivion, so that was nothing new. The feel of everyone’s eyes on her was, though, and it wasn’t exactly welcome, either.

(Still: even if she had known Xaldin’s fate, she was sure she would not have acted any differently.)

“First Demyx, and now Xaldin…” Luxord sighed, aimlessly shuffling cards as he spoke. “Already, we are down to such a small number.”

“All their deaths mean is that they weren’t _really_ cut out to be a part of Organization 13,” Xigbar laughed, that wide grin drawn across his face just like it always was. Quaxa could not really remember a time where he wore any other expression. “And hey—that’s their loss, not ours!”

Saix scoffed quietly to himself. “Hmph. Their loss indeed.”

There was almost a note of _sarcasm_ in his voice, something that Quaxa was both surprised and confused to hear.

“It is no matter,” Xemnas said, with something like a smile in his voice. Quaxa wasn’t sure how he could always sound so relaxed about everything. “We will make do with what we have.” She wasn’t sure what that meant, either.

As if on some sort of cue, Saix turned his attention to Luxord.

“Luxord, you had plans in Port Royal, did you not? Perhaps it is time we moved on them.”

Luxord smiled to himself, and snapped his cards into a single stack with a definitive _snap_. “It would be my pleasure,” he said.

“Quaxa.” Saix spoke, but he did not look at her. “You will go with him.”

Quaxa nodded.

“Yes.”

It was her job, after all.


End file.
